Why did the gaming company waited so long before slamming the user with such a big bill, and allowing him to continue playing the game for over six months? No doubt the company waited for the fruit to ripen before cutting it. Web Coherence warns its readers to be even more cautious as the predators are now actively using legal powers to bail out themselves out of the recession!

Though most corporations claim not to disclose or sell user information to third parties, the reality is quite the opposite.

During the registration process in some recent dealings with a major bank in India, I ended up giving a relative’s cell phone number as my contact number because I was about to travel abroad for a few months. I would normally never give out this number, and I clearly remember only ever giving it away once, on this occasion to the bank.

A few days later my relative received an SMS message on his cell phone, but addressed to me. I was informed that I had won thousands of dollars in prize money, and was asked to register on their website with my bank details to claim the prize.

It set me thinking about how this could happen. Did the bank sell my information on to someone? OR, as is more likely, was my information stolen from their database, and then sold?

I am not sure what happened, but I know one thing for sure: I am a victim.

As Professor Ian Angell so rightly says “Be afraid, be very afraid”.

Once I received an email from a source that claimed to be a globally operating airline company with a job offer for the post of an IT Manager. It was a nice warm personal message, containing details of the job they were offering, the nice fat salary, and a lot of extra perks like a company car and telephone.

 I had in fact previously posted my resume on a popular job portal, and a few weeks earlier someone claiming to be from that same company had interviewed me over the phone. I thought I’d ‘cracked it’, and was delighted to receive a job offer in these difficult times.

 The email seemed completely authentic, but doubts started to creep in when I spotted a spelling mistake in the company brand: a household name. I decided to check out the email in detail before conveying the ‘good news’ to friends and family.

 Of course, on careful inspection I found that it was fake!

 a) The email address was incorrect, and was sent from a domain name that looked almost identical to the actual airline company … but not quite.


b) The company postal address was incorrect.


c) What is more, they had asked me to pay 1500 pounds via wire transfer towards my Work Permit expenses, and also to post my passport to a local company they had nominated. They assured me I would be reimbursed, and that my passport returned within 2 weeks of signing up.

 It was a scam!  They had extracted information about me that was available on the Internet, and then sent me a fake job offer, with the intent of not only extracting money from me, but also stealing my passport.

 All web users should be very wary of  (often unsolicited) job offers that arrive unexpectedly over the web. Next time it could be you receiving the offer of ‘a job that never was’.

Harrassed by a website? Your password stolen? Have you spotted a case of leaky information? Is there is something interesting or urgent that you think we should post on our website, to spread the word?

What about ideas?  Think there’s a great experiment you could run, we could run, or better that a whole community of people could run and analyze?

Write down your stories and ideas, and send them to us. You can leave it either as a comment, or just email it to us at webcoherence [at] gmail [dot] com.

Should we find your story appropriate, and if it fits into WebCoherence.org’s Code of Conduct, we will post it on our website and attribute it as your contribution (provided that is you wish to be attributed).

We look forward to your contributions.